Who won America’s Civil War? Lycurgus Bell and the more than 100,000 Southern soldiers who fought for Abraham Lincoln thought they knew. They were wrong.
Eureka Valley – Grandfathers' Grandfathers tells their story.
Grounded in northwestern Wisconsin’s glacial landscape, this powerful tale unravels the roots that bind a modern rural couple to their Civil War ancestors, Lycurgus Bell and Wood John Johnson.
Born to an Alabama family loyal to the Union, Lycurgus serves in Lincoln’s Civil War army. Returning home a victor, he expects his just rewards. Instead, the Union he suffered greatly to save hangs him out to dry. Driven from home, Lycurgus and his wife seek refuge with their gaited horses in Eureka Valley.
Swedish immigrant, Wood John Johnson, spends years felling Wisconsin’s forests and cruising new timber stands for East Coast financiers. Upon entering Eureka Valley’s unique transitional ecosystem, he glimpses a different way of life that lives on today.
These uncommon characters and others such as Sylvester Partridge, Bratch Porter, Chickamauga, Peder Borgen, Waabani and Mountain Slasher, are drawn from the real lives that made colonization of America’s vast heartland possible.
